Tadeusz Zapadka

Tadeusz Zapadka odpowiada na potrzeby marginalizowanych społeczności wiejskich poprzez inspirowanie lokalnych liderów i liderek, zachęcanie do przedsiębiorczego korzystania z lokalnych zasobów oraz kultywowanie tworzenia lokalnych rozwiązań problemów społeczności.

Tadeusz is introducing the spirit of entrepreneurship in a country affected by a movement away from collective farming practices. He is mobilizing local villagers both to identify available local resources and to seek ways to use them for income-generating activities. One key step is to research market opportunities. Through his efforts, women are starting to produce goods out of willow, while their husbands are setting up and running willow plantations to assure adequate supplies. Other villagers grow fruits, pick wild mushrooms, and collect herbs–all activities that provide for crucial household needs.
Tadeusz's efforts encourage local leaders to work toward local sustainable development. Unlike other organizations that send social workers with ready-made ideas to solve rural problems, Tadeusz empowers local leadership to guide rural development. He identifies village people coming from various professions and educates them both in how to motivate local communities and in how to promote entrepreneurial income-generating ventures. He mobilizes villagers to form cooperatives that create financial value for the communities.
The underlying purpose of this work is to empower local citizens to act on their own behalf. His model works as a catalyst for creating new citizen initiatives to address social problems in similar rural areas everywhere.

The post-Soviet transition away from the system of state-owned collective farms was jarring for rural areas. Traditionally, people had relied on the state to protect agricultural production through subsidies and other support mechanisms. In the 1990s things changed. Despite the closing of farmers' cooperatives, public safety nets and alternative employment opportunities (like the construction of schools and gyms) carried farmers until 1994. With the drop-off in public support, farmers were on their own–often without a plan for the future. Still today, the unemployment rate in the most deprived rural areas is up to 40 percent. The bottom line is that agriculture in Poland is not currently profitable. Farmers must find additional ways to earn a living in order to have enough money to support their families.

Through lack of both education and information-sharing, those living in the rural areas of Poland are disempowered. In 1995, 2 percent of adults from the countryside had university degrees, compared to 10 percent of those living in urban areas. That statistic has been relatively constant since 1978. There is also a large gap in the quality of elementary and secondary education between rural and urban schools. In addition to the lack of educational resources, those living in rural areas lack access to general information. The lack of information for farmers has meant that the mayors of the villages have become the voice for the people, even when they lack the support of the community.

In 1999 Tadeusz gathered a group of active villagers and municipality officials to establish a foundation called "The Village in the XXIst Century." Since 1999 this foundation has become a leading organization in combating unemployment in the region, bringing innovation to rural areas and equipping people with confidence and skills to improve their lives.

Tadeusz is introducing the term "sustainable development" to the local people. His understanding of sustainable development focuses around issues like creating jobs, cost-effective farming, and increasing education and awareness about citizen-based activities. Tadeusz is convinced that one of the keys to improving life in rural communities is the introduction of activities that are based on local resources: natural resources like land, water, and renewable sources of energy; social resources like cooperation among local communities; physical or material resources like buildings, electricity, schools, and farms; and financial resources like retirement schemes and farmers' income. To draw from those resources, Tadeusz mobilizes villagers to join hands in cooperatives that then become competitors for big producers and suppliers of various goods.

One of this foundation's key strategies is to create initiatives that are then adopted by other communities and citizen organizations. One of the first such initiatives mobilized women from former farmers' cooperatives. With this initiative, women were trained in the production of goods from willow and challenged to make use of their collection of forest berries, mushrooms, and herbs. In another initiative, village self-help centers were created where villagers volunteer to organize help, food, and products for the most needy people in the area. To date the program has expanded to 14 villages and is strengthened by the coordination of volunteers by the local women. "English Teaching" introduced language courses to 150 children in four schools. With the initiatives "Far from the road" and "Far in North Warmia there is a small village," Tadeusz developed long-term programs to introduce extracurricular activities for children and young people from rural areas. Tadeusz is convinced that small, visible improvements have great value because they enable people to undertake more serious activities. Because of the trust gained from these activities, larger community action comes easier. This makes possible the launching of more ambitious projects, for example, introducing alternative energy supplies for entire farms or villages.

Most of the initiatives that Tadeusz devised became common or were taken on by other organizations after he introduced them in the villages or in the region. Successful projects became examples for similar projects in other areas. His foundation has become a catalyst for launching new citizen sector organizations that work toward solving various social problems. Since the foundation was established, Tadeusz has initiated the creation of eight citizen-led organizations that eventually took over a number of his programs. These organizations work with those living in poverty, marginalized youth, women, parent-child connections, extracurricular activities, and economic development. His foundation leads a network of 24 organizations, which, together, provide an important means for spreading the citizen-based movement in rural areas.

Local leadership is key to this work. To achieve large-scale impact, Tadeusz is mapping local resources with the leaders of local communities. He is conducting meetings with the leaders and presenting his successful initiatives. His program is now reaching 16 villages where he has identified approximately 100 representatives of local communities. They undergo a training program, after which they are encouraged to involve their communities in various activities.

Tadeusz noticed that rural areas are often particularly deprived, even in the developing countries. Tadeusz is launching an international initiative to share experiences with farmers from Romania, France, Spain, and Italy. At the same time, he is beginning a joint project with a Kaliningrad circle in North Poland that is supported by the Polish Soros Foundation. The latter program is aimed at using Russian and Polish women to build a base of cooperation out of a shared interest in crafting, sewing, and stitching.

Tadeusz grew up in a small village. From childhood he was an active and lively person. He was the first in his area to fashion skis out of simple boards–an idea that many children quickly followed. In the early 1980s, Tadeusz started his professional career in the countryside, and at the same time began introducing various sport activities in the school where he worked. Later, utilizing existing resources, he introduced the idea of "non-camping" holidays in the countryside.

Since 1990, Tadeusz has organized 25 summer camps for children and trained more than 500 children in kayaking and 80 in yachting. His idea of "rural-summer-camps" has been adopted by a number of other organizations in the region. His ideas and efforts involving children have earned a lot of support and popularity among local people.

Caring for children, Tadeusz was moved by seeing the increasing poverty in the countryside that resulted from the economic and political transformation. His initiatives–building a gym, reconstructing a school, and finding partners–were living proof of the value of using available resources, local factories, and local villagers, to ensure possibilities for rural people. Tadeusz came to see that governmental strategies for addressing the needs of rural areas were futile. Short-term employment and social care did not create actual job placements or opportunities for a better life. After seeing motivated individuals empowered by their successes, Tadeusz concluded that patterns of apathy and passivity could be broken when people became direct beneficiaries of their own actions.